The news broke recently: ‘The Prince’, seven years after its end on Telecinco, It jumped to the top of the Netflix viewing tops without anyone explaining why. And with that moment of memory, a question also came when seeing the actress who played Fátima, its protagonist, whom we haven’t seen on television for a long time but hides a life that rivals that of that series in drama: What happened to Hiba Abouk?
The princess
Hiba Aboukhris Benslimane was born in Madrid on October 30, 1986 (that is, he is now 36 years old) and nothing made her expect to become an actress. Her parents, exiled from Tunisia, raised her as a Muslim, and she followed in her footsteps, studying Arabic philology and also learning English, Italian and French. Come on, she is a book polyglot. But she, secretly, she studied scenic art at school: “I had to lie to be able to go to rehearsal at school”declared to 20 minutes explaining the current relationship with his parents, which after the moment of shock became completely normal.
It was with his philology classmates when he dared to go on stage for the first time and discovered his vocation. Hiba became independent, continued studying dramatic art and began to star in small commercials, knowing that her name was going to bring more problems than roles, despite the fact that her accent and appearance is Spanish: she never considered changing her name, but that does not mean that think that “people have many prejudices and are very racist”.
His first opportunity came from Antena 3 in a medical drama that lasted a year and few will remember: ‘Ulysses’ Syndrome’, starring Miguel Ángel Muñoz and Olivia Molina. In the chapter, she appeared with a hijab, Arabic music and an accent that is not hers. Well, one step. Sad, but I pass at the end of the day. There were two years left to get her first recurring role in one of the craziest (and little-remembered) series that has passed through our grills: ‘The island of the nominees’.
From nominee to winner
After a nuclear apocalypse, the entire world has disappeared… except the contestants from a ‘Survivors’-style program that continue to nominate each other. There she played Eva Lys, Miss Congeniality 2008, along with Raúl Cimas, Joaquín Reyes, Arturo Valls, Carlos Areces or Luis Zahera. The series barely hooked 5.6% of the public, but in 2010 and being Cuatro could not be considered a failure.
Little by little the series and the projects followed one another: during the filming of ‘The Heart of the Ocean’, where Guadalupe (its first protagonist) was she met Hugo Silva, and they began a relationship. Spanish television, which likes gossip more than anything, saw a vein and Hiba Abouk was able to become better known by being one of the protagonists of the first two seasons of ‘Con el culo al aire’, on Antena 3, where she played the daughter of an alcoholic woman who is unable to fend for herself. Pure comedy.
Then came ‘The Prince’. And we all know what happened: More than four million people came together between 2014 and 2016 to watch its episodes on Telecinco and, in fact, its finale gathered a 29.2% share, 5,213,000 viewers. With success like this, shared with José Coronado and Álex González, it would be normal for his career to explode, TRUE? Well… not exactly.
On Sundays for football you abandon me
Abouk participated under the direction of Isabel Coixet in a feature film for Gas Natural Fenosa and participated in films without any resonance (‘Caribbean: all inclusive’) before marry Achraf Hakimi in 2019. The Getafe-born footballer not only plays for the Morocco national team, but has also gone through Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan and, currently, PSG. But this is not what matters to us.
The actress, settled with the soccer player and a new mother in 2020, decided to make the decision not to work. “It was a personal decision not to do more series for a while because I didn’t feel like it, I had already done it and I wanted to do other things in my life,” he told Watch TV. She could allow herself time to herself, and she did. He took advantage of that time to make some independent cinema (the ‘Je t’aim3’ trilogy), travel and rest.
In 2021 he did get into season 3 of ‘Mothers. Amor y vida ‘, from Telecinco, whose first season she convinced him, but that did not make him work faster: “I don’t get into the maelstrom of one project after another. It’s not my priority, fortunately”, he commented then. Another series in France, a short premiered at Zinemaldi, his career was going slowly but surely… until on February 26, 2023, her husband, Hakimi, was accused of rape by the French prosecutor’s office.
PSG defended him, but Abouk didn’t take long to distance himself from him: He did not attend The Best gala, he deleted all the photos on Instagram with him, he took the suitcases and he came to Spain a few days ago, settling here. More is still unknown and she has not given any statement about it (although rumors say that the separation process has already begun), but her life has taken a 180 degree turn that Nobody expected seeing their photos on social networks from not so long ago. We will have to see what happens in the future now that it has returned to the audiovisual limelight.
In Espinof | What happened to Meg Ryan, the queen of romantic comedy who, by trying to break her good girl role, destroyed her career
